


Glass Houses

by TheGreatCatsby



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Blood, FrostIron - Freeform, M/M, based on THAT scene from thor 2, if you don't don't worry about it, if you know what i'm talking about you'll know, the character death is not tony or loki, tw: self-harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-20
Updated: 2013-10-20
Packaged: 2017-12-30 00:14:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1011740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGreatCatsby/pseuds/TheGreatCatsby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They never asked each other what this was or how long it might last. Neither thought to imagine how it would end, or why.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Glass Houses

**Author's Note:**

> Based on THAT scene from Thor 2. If you don't know what I'm talking about, it's okay. When I say based on I mean loosely based on. 
> 
> Otherwise, enjoy!

The prison was made of glass. 

Loki frequently found himself in glass prisons, fragile in appearance and strong in nature. He wished, always, to shatter the walls and do damage with the shards, but the glass remained strong and Loki was too weak. 

No one watched him from the other side. They remained at a distance, observing through cameras. 

Loki waited. And waited. 

**

Tony Stark was intelligent, the smartest human Loki had met, one of the smartest beings Loki had met. When SHIELD captured Loki after his escape from Asgard, it was Stark they sent to figure out his magic. 

He did an admirable job. 

And it was obvious how Stark enjoyed Loki’s intellect, desired it. Here was a man who knew of other worlds, of other ways of looking at the universe, and he could keep up. 

Desire was a strong emotion. 

“I’ll regret this,” Stark said, when he hacked SHIELD’s security system and broke Loki out of his cell. 

“Then regret it,” Loki told him, and he spirited them away to Stark’s tower, to Stark’s room. Stark had looked disturbed by Loki’s ability to disregard the security he’d erected to keep himself and his friends safe from such threats. Loki made him forget with a kiss. 

And then there were more than kisses. Loki told himself it was a way of expressing admiration between two men who sorely needed it, but would never admit to such a need out loud. They expressed the words they would not say in caresses, and actions that brought blinding pleasure. They accepted words they would not hear with moans and cries and release. 

And then came more. 

Talking, slowly revealed details of the past, of a cave in Afghanistan, the horror of skin turned blue, a father never satisfied, a shadow always blocking out the sun. 

They never formally agreed to anything, not a relationship, not a truce. Loki did as he pleased, occasionally fighting Thor, or stealing artifacts of interest. Stark fought him and they did not speak of it later. 

They never asked each other what this was or how long it might last. Neither thought to imagine how it would end, or why. 

**

Loki made a deal with Victor Von Doom. Doom would help him gain possession of a magical gem of certain power that he’d had on his radar for a few months. It was locked away in a special facility maintained by SHIELD but not as heavily guarded as the other facilities, somewhere in the forests of North America in northern California. Doom was meant to use his bots to distract the guards, and the Avengers if need be. An easy plan. In theory. 

It wasn’t. 

The Doombots destroyed the building in Doom’s enthusiasm to see the Avengers brought low, even if the plan wasn’t exclusively his. Loki managed to take the gem, but as soon as he made to call off the fight and leave he was accosted by Barton, who had slipped past the main action and was pointing an arrow at Loki’s chest. 

Loki hid the gem away in a pocket dimension and held out his empty hands. “I don’t have it,” he said with a grin. 

Barton fired. 

Loki saw it coming; he twisted away and the arrow hit the wall behind him. A sharp stab of pain exploded two seconds later in Loki’s chest-Barton had fired again, and an arrow protruded from between Loki’s ribs. 

Green energy sparked around Loki’s hands—he didn’t know whether to heal or retaliate. The wound throbbed maddeningly, and he knew he had to do something if he wanted to escape. He prepared to cast a spell and was distracted by a strange sort of buzzing in his head. A streak of silver metal flew by and a scream pierced the air. 

He saw Barton fall, and a Doombot, stained with blood, flew away to rejoin the main fight. 

Loki stared at the crumpled archer on the ground, a puddle of blood slowly spreading out from the broken body. His faithful hawk. He hadn’t anticipated this, hadn’t asked Doom to kill-

The buzzing in his head grew louder until he was forced to his knees. He had time to realize that Barton’s arrows had been tipped with some sort of suppressant before he succumbed to the darkness. 

He awoke in a glass prison. 

**

“Barton is dead,” Fury told him. He was the first visitor after Loki woke. 

Loki had guessed as much, seeing the unnatural amount of red on the floor. “Why are you telling me?” 

“To see if you have a guilty bone in your body,” Fury snapped. “You don’t.” 

Loki kept his mouth shut. He did not tell Fury that the lack of response wasn’t because he didn’t care. This time, unlike when he had tried to take the Earth as his own, he hadn’t wanted death, even the deaths of his enemies. And why?

Stark. 

Loki could no more stop his mischief or pursuit of powerful magics than he could stop breathing, but before he had not cared who he ruined to gain what he desired. He had been full of spite and anger and a burning need to destroy all that those who opposed him held dear. 

Then there was Stark, and though they never spoke of it, there were conditions. Conditions of Loki’s own making, in his own mind, but conditions he knew Stark would have set on him all the same if they had talked about it. No death. Not to the Avengers. Loki would abide until it became necessary not to. 

This…Barton’s death…hadn’t been necessary. It hadn’t been wanted. 

Fury continued to glare at him. “Speechless?”

Loki glared back. 

Fury did not know about him and Stark. 

He left, and as the hours passed and no one came, Loki felt the terrible snake of anxiety unravel and curl around him. 

**

Stark arrived in the darkest hours of the following night, by which time Loki had already guessed why he hadn’t come beforehand. He believed Loki had done it. 

He looked exhausted and furious and he marched right up to the glass wall and Loki stood to meet him. 

And Stark snarled, “Why did you do it?” 

“I did not,” Loki said, calm. 

“Like hell,” Stark snapped. “I-“ he cut himself off, then continued, “You teamed up with Doom. You were on his side and you set this up. Was that gem worth it? Or did you just not care about Barton’s pathetic human life?” 

“Do not put words in my mouth,” Loki said, and his stomach twisted. 

“That’s all we are,” Stark plowed on, “pathetic creatures you can use and kill when you want. Who cares about our lives or how we feel-“

“No!” Loki growled, slamming a hand against the glass. “I did not order Barton’s death, nor did I intend it.” 

“With that kind of firepower?” Stark said. “With the fight you started? It was always a possibility.”

“Are you saying that I’m lying?” Loki asked softly. 

“You used me,” Stark said. “I should have known. The God of Lies-“

“Not about this,” Loki hissed. “Listen, Stark, you are being irrational-“

“No shit,” Stark snapped. “Clint died. He’s dead. He isn’t coming back, and all because you wanted some stupid rock and it was more important than him.” 

“Listen-“

“You just needed to keep starting trouble-“ 

“We never made an agreement that I would stop,” Loki pointed out. 

“That doesn’t mean I don’t hate you for it,” Stark said. “Is that all you do? Go and fuck up peoples’ lives? You did it to Thor, Clint, Selvig, and now me.” 

“And is it not done to me in return?” Loki shot back. “Or did you not listen when I told you why I am at odds with Thor?” 

“I don’t care,” Stark said, despite a flash of some emotion other than anger across his face for a brief moment, because he had listened. “I can’t do this. I can’t let this happen again.” And he looked so angry, so devastated, that Loki felt the floor drop out from under him even as he remained standing. He had cared, he had done this, he had-

“I can get him back,” Loki found himself saying. “I can make a deal and bring him back-“ and oh, how it would cost him, but for once he had felt like himself in the presence of another and he could not-

“Pretty lies,” Stark muttered. 

“No,” Loki insisted. “Listen. I can-“

“No,” Stark cut in. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.” 

“Tony-“

“Is it a guarantee?”

Loki looked away. Hel was tempermental at the best of times. And perhaps Barton was elsewhere, beyond his reach. He could not definitively say, and it frustrated him now. 

“Thought so,” Stark said, thickly. Like he’d wanted to believe it. 

Loki’s eyes burned but he still remained calm. “Stark, we have-“

“I’ve been working,” Stark interrupted, raising his voice, “on something interesting. This cell is fitted with devices that will cancel out magic within and up to 200 feet around the cell. When I leave, at my orders, SHIELD will activate it.” 

“Don’t,” Loki said. 

Stark leaned forward and said, almost in a whisper, “Clint is dead because of the shit you pulled, and that’s what matters. Do you get it? You are nothing to me, and you never were.” 

The words hit Loki like so many knives thrust into his chest, infinitely more painful than the healing wound from Baton’s arrow, like knives pushed through muscle and bone and lungs and heart. He remained where he was, trying to let the it wash over him. 

Stark turned and walked away, through a door, out of sight. Loki did not think about how Stark had made him feel, of Stark’s words, of the loss-

It crashed into him, a swell of loss and rage and hatred so powerful that Loki wanted nothing more than to lash out. His magic raced through his veins and outward, and with a deafening smash the glass walls of the cell exploded. 

Shards hit Loki, slicing through the fabric of his clothes to cut his chest and legs and arms. Blood trickled from a stinging cut on his cheek. 

He collapsed on the floor amid the destruction—not enough, but there was nothing else to destroy, nothing—he was nothing, Stark had said, nothing at all. 

Loki screamed. 

He screamed until he felt his throat might tear with the force of it, and then the scream became a choked sob and then he could do nothing but gasp for air and shake and feel the sharp hurt of everything that wouldn’t leave, that he couldn’t forget, and the urge to destroy it all, to ruin something, to not feel if he must. 

Not enough. 

Still gasping, he reached out for a wickedly serrated shard of glass, sparkling in the light, one that caught his shattered focus, one that he could ruin with, end, destroy-

He didn’t notice the SHIELD agents enter. The shard was almost to the skin of his arm, hovering above where he knew the blood ran (and how he would love to see it run red like a river, to paint everything red until he was drowning in it.) 

A hand grabbed him and pulled. Loki screamed at the man and freed himself enough to stab the shard into his arm and yes, this was good too as blood sprayed from the wound onto the ground, and the man staggered back, but other agents were there to replace him. They struggled to restrain Loki, who managed to injure one other before they pinned his arms and legs to the ground as he twisted and snarled and tried to escape. 

“Now,” he heard one of them say. 

Everything spun, suddenly, and it hurt to breath and his bones felt heavy, and simply trying to move was a struggle. He became aware of cold metal on his wrists, of agents picking him up. He tried to speak but only a hiss of air escaped. 

He wanted to scream. He could do nothing now. They had taken his magic—Stark had taken his magic, Stark had done this. Stark—

The agents carried him to an adjoining room, briefly, while the destroyed cell was fixed. Loki did not know for how long; his senses were scattered, disoriented. 

“No escape now,” one of the agents told him. “You’ll be here for a long time.” 

Loki caught a glimpse of Stark’s face before he passed out; Stark’s eyes, empty of emotion and recognition, as if Loki were another faceless stranger, before he turned his back on the scene and walked away. 

And then, nothing.


End file.
